Welcome to ‘The Roaming Smoker’

Following last year’s Pitch Up season, we are pleased to welcome the Roaming Smoker to the Kingsclere Estates family! The Roaming Smoker is a mobile meat smoker engineered from repurposed farm machinery to serve organic ‘old cow beef’. The Roaming Smoker was a clear forerunner among a wide range of applications to Pitch Up! 2023. Other interesting applications came from The British Chamomile Company to a regenerative agriculture events business and a new market garden.

If you are already familiar with Kingsclere Estates, you probably have already heard of the Pitch Up! Scheme, which is an annual call-out for sustainable land-based businesses to join Kingsclere’s circular community – sharing resources, knowledge and land, to grow good ideas into successful businesses that feed into each other.

Already debuted at the Hannington Fair and Groundswell, ‘The Roaming Smoker’ serves organic meat from existing Kingsclere partner The Roaming Dairy (a mobile milking parlour that also builds soil fertility for Kingsclere’s organic crop rotations) with quinoa grown on the estate for The British Quinoa Company.

Tim says: “The Roaming Smoker is a classic example of Pitch Up! in action: bringing new ideas onto the farm to make the most of the resources already here. Chris Saunders, who had the idea, has a business background from working in aerospace, but wanted to move into sustainable food and events. He designed the smoker unit, but didn’t have access to the engineering support, production space or organic meat. Kingsclere is helping bring his vision to life, supported by our contacts, track record and capital to build the smoker and mitigate the risk.

“Our goal is to have a diverse mix of enterprises all operating off the land – and using each other’s by-product or waste. Nature thrives on diversity; it also fuels economic resilience and helps create a closed-loop system. The Roaming Smoker reduces waste as this cooking method – much slower, and at lower temperatures – makes the meat really tender and brings out the best flavours, so is a good way to use the cheaper / tougher cuts from The Roaming Dairy cows at the end of their lives. Old dairy cow meat isn’t worth a great deal – but The Roaming Smoker can add value to their life cycle by using this ‘old cow beef’.”

Saunders, who lives near the farm in the village of Hannington, was inspired by contemporary American brisket smoking culture. Researching it all online, he designed the smoker and worked with May to find suitable components from old farming machinery (and even a skip)  on the estate, that could be upcycled. May then introduced him to a local engineer to weld it and bring his designs to life – and The Roaming Smoker was born. The Kingsclere team is now supporting Saunders with developing his business plan, including fine-tuning quantities, processes and income potential.